Abstract

When any morphing wing structures and controls are considered, an important parameter is often overlooked, which is the skin for the wing. Conventional fixed wings only require a certain thickness of skin material/structure to endure aerodynamic loading in general. However, the nature of morphing wings that constantly change and adjust wing shapes to optimize the flight performance makes the skin design much more complicated and challenging. When the wing morphs, the skin should comply with the altered geometry while maintaining its stiffness for aerodynamic loadings in various flight modes. Advantages of flexible skins include their large deformation capability and low elastic modulus. However, many works in the design of skins for morphing wings, which typically use smart materials, consider only geometric or static deformations but not dynamic ones. A simple geometry-structured material for skin is not very compliant for multi-dimensional morphing motions such as camber change and twisting, limited in meeting various aerodynamic and structural loadings and stresses, and expensive to establish design process for customized skins for morphing wings. The main theme of this proposal is to design advanced skin structures for camber morphing wing aircraft. Thus, this study focuses on skin design process and procedure for Variable Camber Compliant Wings (VCCW) thorough modeling, stress/strain analysis, and experiments of solid and lattice structures.